Software builder, group fitness instructor

Professional Year in Review (2016)

DPRA, Inc.

JFAST

Implemented multiple features and fixed several bugs for Release 7 of JFAST, a system that allows military planners to perform transportation and logistics feasibility analyses for selecting the best course of action

Became a team lead; this involved taking more ownership of task creation and estimation, assignment of work, knowledge acquisition from subject matter experts, sharing information with the development team, improving inter-department communication through shared documentation, focusing on smaller work break-down

Assimilated knowledge of military logistics, functionality of the legacy version of JFAST, and the architecture of the existing software solution

Acted primarily as a full-stack developer for one of three cross-functional teams; this work involved integrating XAML from a UI/UX designer, developing core logic, unit testing, and prototyping database requirements (i.e., table design, stored procedures)

Communicated frequently with the QC team to improve the quality of acceptance criteria and minimize the introduction of new bugs

Broke down large features and product backlog items on my team into manageable and estimable tasks

Encouraged and participated in team code reviews

Paired with junior developers to help them learn the development tools and processes

Led Scrum-related meetings (standups, retrospectives) as well as weekly in-depth technical and functional discussions with our customers

Helped with branch-merging and deploying to test nodes for the team

Represented our team during end-of-sprint functional reviews; such reviews involved most people on the project ranging from other developers, to product owners, to the CTO and CEO

Fostered an environment for development practices such as code reviews, pair/mob programming, unit testing, and frequent bug triage with the QC team

CMMI Initiative

Software development representative member of the Software Engineering Process Group; this is the tactical body for managing the process and is comprised of members who represent various functions within the company

Participated in a 13-week special interest group (SIG) to develop the process improvement workflows, Agile values, work environment standards, and metrics repository

Took part in a 2-day workshop on process metrics; this involved designing metrics as well as one-on-one discussions with executive management about how these metrics help measure progress toward company goals

Professional development

Wrote the following topical blog posts in addition to 52 weekly professional development summaries